


hook, line, sunk.

by extryn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Physical Disability, Post-Episode: s10e05 Oxygen, Soon-To-Be AU, Spoilers, The Doctor Keeps The Master (Again), The Vault (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 03:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10912941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/pseuds/extryn
Summary: And so the Master permitted himself to be imprisoned; enticed by the little victories he won (would always win) over the Doctor. But the Doctor knew better: deep within this Master was a viciousness that waited to strike.It would not be put to rest so easily.





	hook, line, sunk.

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory disclaimer: I don't actually think Simm!Master is in the Vault. I don't think I even _want_ Simm!Master to be in the Vault. But do you think I'm going to pass up the opportunity to write it?
> 
> This was written really quickly, under conditions of chronic sleep deprivation and some interminable and frustrating academic circumstances, so y'know. But if I don't post it before it gets Jossed, I probably never will.
> 
> The slash is only really there if you want to look for it. now, go forth, and make more fic.

‘Doctor,’ crooned the voice, high and mocking. He’d become used to it sounding muffled, attenuated by a good foot of validium alloy and then relayed across the interdimensional shields that kept the inside of the Vault, inside.

Not that those measures brought any comfort to the Doctor. Both of them were aware that sophisticated Time Lord technology wasn’t halfway near enough to keep the Master imprisoned for long.

But the satisfaction of keeping the Doctor chained to one place, one time? The myriad ways to torture him with it - a cruel parody of those years on Earth, when they’d been young and foolish enough that the Doctor now wished for such simplicity; a barbed reminder of how the Doctor had once thought these years owed to him, until he’d learnt the only thing the Master loved more than freedom was hurting him - _that_ , that held more weight than any bars or chains.

Had held the Master for some seventy-odd years.

And this certainly wasn’t the Master that the Doctor thought he remembered - impulsive, ebullient, a whip-smart mind that turned on a dime. He’d been as dangerous as a live wire and twice as unpredictable, at constant odds with the patience and careful fastidiousness that was too essential for the Master to regenerate out of.

The Master who’d found him on Gallifrey was inside-out, back-to-front. Bearded and robed, as deliberate and cunning as a favoured memory - revisited until the colours were twice as bright, the feelings truer than they’d ever been in the moment. As if he’d rejected the humiliation of his last body so firmly, he’d excised out of his hearts anything that might remind him of it.

And so the Master, with unnerving patience, permitted himself to be imprisoned; enticed by the little victories he won ( _would always win_ ) over the Doctor. But the Doctor knew better: deep within this Master was a viciousness that waited to strike. It would not be put to rest so easily.

The voice was no longer muffled. It was clarity incarnate, like every other sound the Doctor heard, with his vestibulocochlear nuclei jacked up to eleven.

‘ _Doctor_ ,’ the Master drawled, a tone that sent sense-memory sparking down the Doctor’s spine where the ghosts of the Master’s fingers stroked. ‘I know you’re there.’

The Doctor’s fingers froze on the door. They searched, scanning for vibration with the tips of his fingers, where sensation was amplified to the point of pain.

‘I have to wonder why you’ve been avoiding me, you see. Imprisonment tends to predispose to boredom, it’s somewhat axiomatic,’ the Master said, pausing for effect. Something about the sound, relayed via the TARDIS’s translation matrix and not at all palpable, set the Doctor’s teeth on edge. ‘So here I am, bored, and I think - gee, hasn’t it been a while since the Doctor came to assuage his conscience?’

‘Now that, of course, isn’t really in the definition of imprisonment. Usually it’s the _prisoner_ whose misdeeds need forgiving, but not you, Doctor. So you’ll have to forgive that leap of logic, but you follow me so far, don’t you?’

The Doctor’s heart rate ratcheted up, and he found himself making no efforts to stop it.

‘And then I start wondering,’ began the Master, his voice now wickedly soft. ‘Has something happened? Hmm, no. Has the Doctor gotten bored of me? Unlikely - you were bored within weeks of setting up shop here. The answer is much more interesting: the Doctor is _avoiding_ me.’

‘Perhaps he’s done something _bad_. Terrible, even. So terrible, you’re afraid of what I might say when I find out. Maybe someone died - they’re always doing that, after all. Maybe there’s something you don’t want me to know, and you can’t hold your bluff.’

It was ridiculous. As if the Master could possibly have found out, as if the Doctor would let him _believe_ he could have found out—

‘I think it’s all three,’ said the Master. ‘Knock-knock.’

The Doctor took a deep breath, and suddenly realised he’d been holding it. He debated turning away, playing out this standoff, accepting this mind game for what it was and nothing more. He even managed to get half-way through the action, until he stumbled on a half-brick he’d somehow missed on the six other occasions he’d walked through here, grazing the heels of both palms on the floor, and a hysterical frustration rose up and overcame him—

‘This sort of scheme worked a _lot_ better when you still hypnotised people,’ the Doctor pointed out, his voice brighter and slyer than he felt. ‘I’m busy. Don’t flatter yourself.’

A deep, satisfied sigh. A perverse sigh, if the Doctor was honest.

‘And there it is,’ the Master said, low and quiet. ‘Still can’t lie to me, can you? After all these years. I feel it, Doctor. What you see, what you think, what you feel, bleeding off you. Gallifrey rises, and you’ve forgotten what it means to be a Time Lord.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ the Doctor said, instinctively clamping down on his mind, as if it was even possible in the first place that he could leave himself so vulnerable—

The Master chuckled, the noise so loud the Doctor could have sworn it was beside his ear, his senses so amplified he imagined he _felt_ the cool breath against his neck. He shivered, startling when he came up against a pile of - no, a curtain - and cursed his inability to remember _one_ room, _one simple room_!

‘I suppose then, if I’m wrong,’ the Master whispered, the noise landing against his skin like firecrackers, ‘You ought to see me doing _this_.’

The smell of leather _, a grip over his mouth, pain, electric-white pain arcing across his_ —

 

_And the black._


End file.
